Sunset Huntress: A New Beginning

by Wind Typhoon

Side Story: Arms

Weapon Fan Meets Weapon Maker

---

It was Thursday, and classes just ended. Jack Honoh figured that it was time to relax with a sketchpad and some pencils, but not in a normal place. No, he felt like getting some elevation, perhaps in a tree. No, not perhaps, but definitely in a tree. There was a tree near the spot in the courtyard that seemed to get destroyed at least a couple times per semester that looked perfect.

Upon reaching the tree, and making sure there was nothing to his left, Jack put on the Arms Driver and pulled out the Arms Memory, hitting the button on it as always.

“ARMS.”

“Henshin.” Upon inserting the Memory, the sounds of blades sharpening and guns priming played on a loop. The loop didn’t last long as he pulled the Memory to his right and allowed it to slide back to its centered position.

“ARMS.”

A blast of energy or something like it came out of the barrel, hit nothing but air for 15 feet, then turned back and formed on Jack, making him Kamen Rider Arms, once again. He set his supplies on the ground and pulled out a weapon magazine, which he put in the Driver with well practiced motions.

“GOGO V!”

Once the magazine was in, he slid the Arms memory two more times.

“FIVE LASER. CLAW ANCHOR.”

The weapons appeared in Arms’ hands, and he contemplated them for a bit. “This set always messes with me” he idly commented to nobody as he moved the Laser Grip to the Claw Anchor and set the Laser’s barrel on top of the grappling claw. After recollecting his supplies, he fired up into the tree, catching a branch that was both high up and around the middle of the tree. He held on as the line took him up, unaware of the silver eyes that were watching him.

After about a minute of going up and weaving through branches, he reached the one he had anchored to first. After getting some solid footing, he detached the hook and fired up to a higher branch and repeated the process. When he got up to the branch, he found that, while sturdy, it was also rather thin. Fortunately, there were some thicker ones a few feet below it, four of which looked oddly smooth.

“Am I not the only one to have come up here?” he wondered before deciding it didn’t matter and sat down on one of the smoother branches. Years of students coming up and sitting on the branches, along with a few sanding tools, had made some comfortable spots to sit in. As he prepared his drawing materials, he idly thought, “This would make a great sniping nest.” What he didn’t see were the letters SNPR and NEST carved in the opposite side of the trunk.

The sketchbook he had was one of many dedicated to a single weapon set. This one was for the Zyuranger set. On the first page were all the weapons from the set, in full color. After that was the natural combination of five of the unique weapons, a five barreled crossbow gun.

Beyond that were numerous combinations of weapons he had come up with, such as a pair of tonfa made from the Saber Daggers, Trice-Lance, and two Ranger Sticks. Some of the combinations had been used before, but more were just conceptual combinations that hadn’t been used. The Gun City Police Department was a great place for him to have worked in.

Arms was in the middle of designing a set of weapon armor when a gunshot rang out. Looking in the direction he heard it from, all he saw was the tree’s foliage. Clearly, he would have to stand up in order to see what was going on, but he was comfortable and his supplies were on his lap, keeping him from getting up.

“I wish I had a camera drone” he thought. “I think I’ve got one designed in the new copy of the third Fourze sketchbook. Come to think of it, why didn’t I just use the Winch Module?”

A few more shots rang out, each one getting louder. Either the rounds were being fired in ascending order of volume or someone was using recoil to fly up, which sounded ridiculous. Flying via recoil was impractical at best and a hopeless endeavor at worst, as far as he knew. It was much easier to put a shield or something like one down and ride an explosion.

A few seconds after the fourth gunshot, which came from somewhere behind him, the tree shook a bit, like someone landed on it.

“Um, hi?” a voice that Arms recognized as belonging to Ruby Rose timidly said.

“Hello, Ruby” Arms casually replied without diverting attention from his sketch. “What brings you up here?”

“Oh, I saw you come up here, and I thought I’d join you. The Sniper Nest has a great view, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve had paper view the whole time I’ve been up here.” Jack smirked under the Arms visage.

“What? How did you get a tv up here? How can you even afford pay per view? Or a TV?”

Arms flipped through some of his previous Zyuranger work, stopping at a giant axe he made once and holding it over his shoulder for Ruby. “Take a very close look at this to find out. And I mean really close.”

Ruby took the sketchbook and admired the sketch before looking really closely at it. Arms took the opportunity to put some of his pencils away and stand up. “See what I mean yet?”

“No, but I love this axe. I can see a bow, a sword, daggers, a staff, a different dagger, and a smaller axe in it.”

“So you like the paper view? Or am I drawing this out too much?”

Ruby was quiet for a moment before facebooking, the pun sinking in. “Are you sure you’re Jack and not Yang under that armor?” She handed the sketchbook back to Arms.

“Last I checked, yes.”

“That sounded like one of my sister’s puns. But now I have one that she hasn’t used! I think.”

“That’s great. So, why did you decide to join me up here?”

Ruby went back to her more timid voice. “Well, you have access to, like, every kind of weapon in the history of ever, even if they look kind of odd, and you can make even more things with them. You even made a grappling hook earlier out of a gun and claw weapon, and it was just so cool! I’ve also seen you put weapons on your armor in interesting ways, like putting parts of a giant sword on you as extra armor, and I love that ability of yours, and I just want to see everything you can do. So, can I see all your weapons?”

Arms took a second to process what he heard into its individual words, since Ruby’s speed and pitch went up as she went on about the weapons. “Tomorrow after classes end.”

“Oh come on! Not even one set?” Ruby whined.

“Nope. Today, I draw. Also, the grapple gun is not an original build. I had to put the grip on it for it to even work. Putting the barrel on top was simply because it was a convenient spot.

“Anyways, could you let me draw?”

“Oh, alright. But we are meeting up after classes end tomorrow, right?”

“Sure.”

“Yes!” Ruby jumped out of the tree, using Crescent Rose to adjust her fall direction towards the dorms.

“I think I’ll draw a sniper rifle and scythe today.” And with the thought done, he flipped to a blank page and started sketching out the ideas.

---

Ruby made her way to her team’s dorm with more pep in her step than she knew what to do with. Maybe she could give some to Weiss or Blake. Or maybe Jaune.

Ruby rounded the last corner to her dorm’s hallway and lost her pep when she hit something solid and metal, causing her to fall backwards. “Hello, neighbor” a familiar voice said.

“Jennifer?” Ruby said as she got back up, seeing it was indeed her. “What’s with the giant bullseye target?”

“Take it to your room, set it at the foot of Blake’s bed facing the window, and have the window open. It will make sense within the hour.”

“But it’s only a couple minutes until Four.”

“It will make sense within the next hour.” Jennifer put the target in Ruby’s hands, a slightly comical sight since the target was almost as big as she was. She turned around and walked back to her dorm, opening Team RWBY’s door along the way.

Ruby could barely stand up with the target in her hands. A moment after Jennifer went into her dorm, Yang popped her head out of her dorm to see who had opened their door. She didn’t see anyone, but she did see Ruby with the target.

“Ruby!” Yang said. “You know we’re not supposed to bring those targets in here.”

“Help me, sis!” Ruby practically squeaked out. “This is getting heavy.”

Yang noticed Ruby was shaking like a leaf and rushed out, relieving her of the target with ease. “You know what, now that I think about it, how did you get this target up here? There’s no way you could have carried this up the stairs yourself.”

Ruby leaned against the wall. “Jennifer gave it to me a minute ago.”

“Then how would she have gotten it up here?” Yang wondered.

“I don’t know. She told me to set it up in our dorm, but didn’t say why.”

“Huh. Now I want to know why too. Let’s get this set up.”

Yang and Ruby went in the dorm, Yang having no problem carrying the target. With Ruby’s guidance, she set the target up facing the window, which Ruby opened up. Blake and Weiss asked what was going on, and Ruby explained what happened. Then they all went to do their homework.

---

After finishing the sketches to his satisfaction, which took about 45 minutes, Arms decided to build one of the weapons. Considering where he was, the sniper rifle seemed appropriate. As soon as he pulled the Gogo V magazine out of the Arms Driver, the Claw Anchor and Five Laser disappeared. He put it away and pulled out another magazine, which was immediately put in the Driver.

“ZYURANGER!”

A pull on the Arms Memory came a second later.

“MOTHBREAKER!”

Arms caught the axe and held it by the gun grip built into the head, then pulled again.

“TRICE-LANCE!”

Once again, the weapon was caught. Arms pulled the bladed ends off the staff and put one end of it in the Mothbreaker’s barrel, giving him the extra barrel length he needed for a sniper rifle. The blades were themselves split in half, then all four halves were joined together and put on the end on the barrel in a flattened X, giving the gun yet another extension.

“RYUUGEKIKEN!”

The red hilted sword was set on top of the forming rifle. Arms pulled the handle off and split it into two long halves, which he attached to the underside of the barrel as a bipod.

“PTERA ARROW!”

Arms removed the string from the bow and attached it to the side of the gun. It made a good, if rather thin carrying strap, which he hadn’t included in the original sketch. The rest of the bow got folded up and attached as the rifle’s stock.

“SABER DAGGER!”

Arms rubbed the bottom of each dagger’s handle with his thumb until a lens was revealed. A quick experiment confirmed that his dual section scope worked. Where one looked, the other would show what it saw. The one that looked out was set between the Trice-Lance blades, and the eyepiece was set on the Ryuugekiken.

Arms admired the rifle he had made. By no means did it look like a normal sniper rifle, but then again, when did any of his custom built weapons look normal?

Just as he finished admiring the rifle, Arms’ scroll rang with a text alert. He saw it was from Jennifer. It read “You have a target in RWBY’s dorm. Hit it”. With a shrug, Arms put the scroll away and sought out his target. He didn’t have to look for long, since RWBY’s dorm curtains and window were open, allowing him to see both the shiny target and the book boosted bunk bed Blake and Yang built. Badly. They could at least have used outdated textbooks instead of what looked like fantasy titles.

Focusing back in, he saw the target. As he’d done before back in Gun City, he lined up his crosshairs, didn’t bother accounting for sway, wind, or drop (since those never affected his shots for whatever reason), and fired a single shot.

---

Team RWBY was gathered around a strategy assignment, sitting on the floor behind the target, which they had quickly gotten used to being there. The assignment played out more like a game, and the teacher for that class was an avid tabletop game player. He had numerous awards from tournaments for such games on the classroom wall.

With no forewarning, the metal target shattered and a scorch mark appeared in the middle of their map. Team RWBY quickly scattered to their dorm’s corners by their lower bunks, out of sight from the window. Ruby and Weiss kept still and quiet by their beds while Yang found herself stroking Blake’s hair to keep both herself and her teammate calm.

Jennifer casually strode into their dorm and looked at the metal fragments and the map RWBY was using, seemingly unaware of the danger they perceived her to be in. She appeared to be reading something in the destruction, then moved some triangular fragments onto the map, drawing on some of them with a permanent marker as well. Once she was done, she left a folded piece of paper on the scorched map. When she was apparently satisfied, she closed the window and curtains, and simply left.

Ruby picked up the paper and read it. “That is what Jack can do with a bunch of melee weapons and a bow. Also, I did your assignment for you. You’re welcome.”

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Why haven't you responded to any of my comments? Did I make you mad somehow? Whatever I did, I'm sorry!

[Wind Typhoon]

7736944 No, I just like to see what people are saying. I usually don't respond unless it's criticism.

[blazikenking]

I find the lack of comments disturbing. I must promote this fic a bit.

[Wind Typhoon]

7739222 I would appreciate it